The US military is fighting a fitness crisis brought by a growing number of obese troops and ‘skinny fat’ recruits who can’t pass fitness tests.
Obesity rates among service members surged during COVID and recruiters are also confronted by a growing number of would-be soldiers who are simply too large, too weak or both.
Top brass are now redefining fitness tests – including the military’s notorious ‘tape test’ – and introducing state-of-the-art scanner machines that calculate body fat. Troops who fail are placed on special programs to bring them into shape.
The military’s fitness crisis, which generals have terms a threat to national security, is compounded by the growing obesity rates among all Americans. A recent report by the Center for Diseases Control titled ‘Unfit to Serve’ found a staggering one third of young adults are ‘too heavy’ to serve in the military.
Around 23 percent of Army soldiers were obese in 2021, according to a recent study of data from the Military Health System Data Repository. That’s compared to 18 percent before the pandemic, which meant physical work and training was scaled back due to lockdowns.